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enjoyed to create a certain degree of lassitude and indifference, which it does on every nation. {19}

Whatever may be the accidental circumstance which first raises one nation above others, or the train of adventitious ones that increase for a while and continue that superiority, nothing can be more clear and certain, than, that they have a natural tendency to come back to a level, merely by the exertions of men in the direction of acquiring wealth by industry, and without any of those causes which arise out of war, or interrupting the career of each other.

When, from the conduct of one nation towards another, or from whatever other cause war, =sic= becomes the means by which the superiority of two nations is to be decided, there are many things in favour of the least wealthy nation.

It has less to protect and to lose, and more to attack and to gain; the task is much easier and more alluring.  There is a sort of energy in attempting to obtain, that is not to be found in those who are only exerting themselves to keep, of which it is difficult to explain the cause, but of which the existence is very certain.

Where natural strength, and the struggle with want is great, as is the case with nations who have made but little progress in acquiring wealth, the contest with a people more enervated by ease, and less inured to toil is very unequal, and does more than compensate those artificial aids which are derived from the possession of property. {20} From this cause, the triumph of poorer over more wealthy nations has generally arisen, and, in most cases, has occasioned the contest to end in favour of the more hardy and poorer people.

Of the revolutions that took place in the ancient world; whether operated by degrees or by violence and suddenly, those may be ge-

—–­ {19} Doctor Garth, in his admirable poem of the Dispensary, says;—­

“Even health for want of change becomes disease.”

This is the case with nations sunk in prosperity.

{20} Why men should have been less tenacious to keep that which is fairly theirs, than rapaciously to obtain that which is not, is a strange thing; but nothing is more certain; and the effects of that propensity are very great, and its existence very general.  In the ruin of nations, it is a most active and powerful cause. -=-

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nerally traced as the causes.  In those ancient nations any considerable degree of luxury and military success were incompatible with each other; but, in the present age, the case is greatly altered.  Military discipline is not near so severe as formerly, and bodily strength has but little effect, while the engines of war can only be procured by those resources which wealth affords; by this means, the decline of nations is, at least, now become a less natural and slower progress than formerly; the operations of war have now a quite different tendency from what they formerly had, and this effect is produced by the introduction of cannon, and a different mode of attack and defence; to carry on which, a very considerable degree of wealth is necessary. {21}